Can someone please tell me what was the point of this movie? This movie is so painfully unfunny; I would undertake a full day of dental work without Novocain, before I let myself undergo this torture again. Not one of the characters, with the exception of Irma P. Hall, as landlady, Marva Munson is even remotely interesting. Matter of fact, if they?d all gotten blown up prior to the end of this unintended disaster, I think everybody watching it would have applauded.
As it stands, I wanted to burn a Tom Hanks figurine in effigy. Tom Hanks (who plays a character portrayed by Alec Guiness in the original) stars in this remake of the British crime farce, The Lady-killers, as Goldthwait Higginson Dorr. However, this version, taking place in rural Natchez, Mississippi, for one thing doesn?t seem to know what era it wants to portray. Tom Hanks dresses and behaves as someone might in the 1930?s, and some of the country scenery reflects that.
Contrarily Marlon Wayans (his role played by Peter Sellers in the original), as Gawain MacSam, acts the part of a loud, dirty-mouthed, profanely unfunny young hip-hop and thuggish Black man. (His usual role, which at this point has become tired, stale and expected.) Wayans, once amusing, is quickly becoming his own stereotype, if that is possible.
However, all of this forces one to muse, is it the genteel south of the 1930?s, or the bold hip-hop south of the new millennium? You?re never quite sure, although the cinematography is lush and makes the film appealing to look at, why bother? As the story goes: Tom Hanks portrays a prim and proper (phony) professor who rents a room in the home of a religious, no-nonsense widow, portrayed by Irma P. Hall. Under the pretext of meeting for band practice, he persuades her to allow him to use the basement of her comfortable home, where he and his bumbling band of thieves plan to pull off the perfect heist, by tunneling through one of the basement walls, and right into counting house of the Bandit Queen, a gambling steamship anchored on the coast line of the Mississippi. Simple enough? Of course not, as along the way madcap mayhem ensues. The bumbling dynamite expert blows off his own finger.
One of the crew has irritable bowel syndrome, another has the IQ of a tootsie roll. The loudmouth has too loud a mouth. Of course in the process of their bumbling, the landlady discovers what they are up to, and for the remainder of the movie the inept would-be robbers try to figure how to pull off the heist and bump the landlady off to boot.
This classic, originally written by William Rose, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick, has lost it?s magic somewhere in the Coen Bros translation. What was once witty slapstick, now seems too over the top and buffoonish, and at times becomes downright juvenile toilet humor. Irma P. Hall, playing the role originated by Katie Johnson is the one breath of fresh air in the film, and one longs for her time on screen never to end.
But end it does, and we are snatched back to reality, asking ourselves the same question we asked at the outset: Can someone please tell me, what is the point of this movie? The Cast Goldthwait Higginson Dorr - Tom Hanks Marva Munson - Irma P. Hall Gawain MacSam - Marlon Wayans Garth Pancake - J.K. Simmons The General - Tzi Ma Lump - Ryan Hurst